Cholesterol levels and Readership Surveys

I have really missed the bus on this one. I had meant to write on the IRS 2008 (Round 2) soon after it was released – but got caught up in my travels. Meanwhile, the ‘Romantic Realist’ and many others have literally beaten me to the post (Read RR’s Blog Post "I am No 1. No, I am No 1" in the MINT by clicking here). I had written much of my thoughts on Readership Surveys in India in 2 of my earlier Blogs Is it only about Eye-balls? and When adults act as kids. At a broader level, my views remain largely the same as I have also noted in my comments on RR’s piece (Read Comments at the bottom of RR's Blog by Clicking here).

Co-incidentally just the day before its release (on the 4th of Nov), I was chatting up a friend who has been on the Technical Committee of the IRS (MRUC) for many years. He made several very pertinent and interesting points. Here is a gist of our discussions.

Since the MRUC started as an initiative of Advertisers and Media Agencies (Brahm Vasudeva and Roda Mehta were the prime movers) – the IRS was conceived primarily as a Media Planning Tool. Therefore, the emphasis was not so much on the absolute “results” but more on the quality of the “research” – and, therefore, the underlying data, which would provide users insights for their media planning.

However, publishers has come to see it more like marks scored in a school or college examination – therefore, go to extra-ordinary lengths to ensure better “results” – especially after the NRS went into hibernation and IRS became the primary currency for print-media.

It’s common knowledge in the industry that, most organizations have their own “experts” ( read ‘fixers’) – who claim to be ‘specialists’ or past-masters at obtaining better results for their respective publications. Apart from using – old tricks of the trade such as distributing free copies around the time when the field work is conducted (this was developed to the level of a fine art with the level of sophistication that was applied to specially target areas where the survey was known to be happening - with information gathered thru’ moles in the data collection agencies), over time this was carried to a higher level with more blatant tampering of data. Industry insiders tell tales of instances – when field researchers have been apprehended ‘selling’ survey forms or caught in fisticuffs with goons engaged by publishers trying to obtain . While that could well be malicious gossip, it is widely believed that large media houses have a substantial ‘budget’ allocated for ‘managing’ – Readership Results – just as they were known to do for ABC numbers. (Click here to read Pramath Sinha’s piece published sometime ago in the MINT)


However, MRUC officials and the Research Agencies will vouch for the overall validity of the data. They claim to have built in a system of checks and balances that easily throw up aberrations during the process of data validation. In every survey – there are cases where a ‘back-check’ has been ordered or the data for certain publications have been withheld for publication – until the verification was carried out.

But in their over anxiety to obtain higher numbers, publishers often lose sight of more important underlying data. Moreover, in the process they also end up undermining the credibility of the survey – forcing Media planners and buyers to resort to developing their own customized metrics – which, with very small sample sizes, have their own set of limitations, claims of “proprietary” methodology notwithstanding.

It’s another typical case of shooting the messenger. So, what’s the way forward? The industry is already clamouring for the revival of their abandoned child the NRS. But, is there any reason to believe that- the NRS would produce results that are dramatically different from the IRS. Past experience doesn’t say so. It’s like me going to a different ‘Path Lab’ each time to check my Lipid Profile. It still doesn’t solve my problem of high Cholesterol and elevated hepato-bilary markers.

More later…..

When Adults act as Kids !!

Sen ( read comment here ) has drawn my attention to this “straight on the bull’s eye” article of Pramath ( Raj Sinha ) published in this Wednesday’s ( September 23rd ) issue of MINT, which I seem to have missed in the flurry of writing blogs. I agree with practically everything Pramath has said in his piece “Time to grow up ..” ( click here to read the full piece) – and some of it we too have already touched upon in a few of our earlier posts (e.g. Is it only about Eye-balls click here to read ).


Though’ very direct, Pramath – being his urbane and sophisticate self – has still pulled a few punches. He says advertisers – “subsidize” publications. While this may be true in rest of the world – in India it has gone a few steps further. From a situation of 80:20 mix of Advertising to Circulation – thanks to deep discounts, jodis and gift subscription schemes most newspapers have gone to “negative” realization on Circulation (net of Trade Commissions). In the process – publications have become subservient (I am tempted to use a stronger term) to advertisers and Media Buying Agencies.

Vanita Kohli writes in her book “The Indian Media Business” (Page 39, 2nd Edition ): “……It is routine for advertisers to pull out entire campaigns if there is even a mildly objective reportage on them”. Those of us who have worked in publications know the extent to which this practiced and how publishers (with a few rare exceptions – that too selectively applied) tamely give in to such pressure plays.

I had written about my newspaper vendor not bothering to collect his bills for months - because now he earns much more from trade commissions and schemes. The other day, a friend from the circulation department of a leading newspaper group was telling me, how they no longer see the “dips” in sales during holiday seasons as before. This is because there is a “negative incentive” for the reader to ‘stop’ the copies – while the family is on holiday, as with the price they pay for the paper being next to nothing they would lose out much more from “Raddi” realization.


It was an interesting realization for me (a fact which one always knew but never thought of it) that, one cannot compute the actual “all India” circulation of practically any newspaper group from the published ABC figures, because at any point in time – some edition or other of theirs will be out of ABC.

The Readership Surveys make up another story altogether. NRS, which was actually a creation of the publishers themselves ( a joint initiative of INS and ABC) has been given almost a quiet burial (though’ I believe there are some murmurs of reviving it again – because IRS is becoming inconvenient for some ). We remember the shameful litigations that happened over it – after editors (of the same publications which had filed the ‘proxy’ law-suits) had written signed pieces upholding NRS as the “gold-standard” of the industry ( when their papers were trounced by competition in the IRS ). Then it was amazing to see a section in the INS going to embrace the IRS - over-ruling objections from some industry veterans ( IRS was seen as a rival survey – as it was the product of a reactionary move by advertisers and agencies against the NRS) - in what looked like a Indo-Pak peace mission to the Attari Border - only to denounce it later.

So, is the Advertiser getting fooled by the “smoke and mirrors” (to borrow Pramath’s term), which we hold before them. I am not sure. I think both advertisers and media buyers have become much more savvy to separate the chaff from the claims and have developed their own metrics ( however, approximate they might be) to get a sense of the real numbers. A case in point would be the very publication in which Pramath’s piece appeared. For all it’s tall claims of being the undisputed No 2 Financial paper in the country with a circulation of 120k and readership of 1.6 (higher than ET – read Samil’s Comment on the ‘I-Pod Effect’ click here) you have to only turn its pages to see the volume of ads it is managing to get after 18 months of its launch.

So it could well be that in trying to fool others, the publishers are being a bit “clever by half” and might end up fooling themselves. Something, I feel, the PE bankers who are waiting in queue to be part of the ‘big growth story’ of Indian Print media should take note of.

Let’s debate this further. For the moment I just wanted all of you to read this very positively provocative article.

Is it only about Eye-balls ?

Taking off from where Sen and Robin started….


I think it was R Sundar who once told me, chatting over tea at the BCCL office in Government Place East in Calcutta, “circulation has to be built copy by copy - there are no short cuts”. Then there was AD who would never tire of recounting how it took The Telegraph a good 10 years to touch the circulation of the original 'Englishman' of Chowringhee Square, despite the self-destructive tendency of the latter. And, till date the ToI hasn't been able to win the 'catch up' game with TT, as indeed it hasn’t been able to dislodge the Deccan Chronicle in Hyderabad.

But in today's age of SMSs and with PE Investors breathing down one’s neck very few have the luxury of waiting for a decade to build a critical-mass circulation to be regarded as a serious “challenger”. So we have to pump hormones and steroids into a new born to make an Obelix out of it in no time.

The ToI, as always, were the original innovators with their 'invitation price'. The apocryphal story of how the idea struck SJ while passing the Alipore Zoo in a car with PG will go down in the annals of the history of newspapers in India. Then came the 'Jodi' offer which knocked the day-
lights of the competition, who were left with little option but to follow suit in great haste. In the process, as everyone knows, the vendors and the raddi-wallahs made hay while the publishers ( at least one of them) bled to near comatose.

This was also the time when the school newspapers ( the NIE and PACE ) came into play as, by some strange logic, they counted for ABC numbers. A school principal in Delhi once told me about the trouble they had in disposing the old papers – which the students inevitably never carried back home, tho’ it made handsome gratuity for the lower level staff.

Next was the era of deep discounted annual subscriptions and consumer promotions. Taking a leaf out of the magazines, which had long perfected the art of selling subscriptions on the back of gifts, newspapers – by then already infiltrated by the FMCG wiz-kids – began to entice their customers with offers of bed-sheets and tupper-ware. There was one major difference between the magazines and the newspapers – which everyone forgot or rather chose to ignore. In the case of magazines, it was far easier to chose your target audience by using DM (Direct Marketing) techniques. And, since the delivery was through courier or post – and not through the trade – it largely eliminated ‘loss-in-transit’.

The joke doing rounds in the newspaper circles then was – “we also sell newspapers”. I still remember walking into the Calcutta Book Fair in the winter of 2003 and saw a huge pavilion from which people were walking out with watches. Initially, I thought it was a Titan stall only to discover later it was actually of a newly launched national paper and the watches were being given as a free-bee for anyone who signed on for a year’s subscription.

Companies went freely in and out of the ABC as per their convenience. Finally ABC was forced to re-write its rules to come up with a new formula for calculating NPS (Net Paid Sales) to accommodate the big boys of the industry. Bhaskar Das was quoted in an interview saying, India would have moved to free news-papers long ago had it not been for the "raddi economics". Infact, today - if you take the "raddi-value" into account thereader is actually being paid to buy a paper.

I received a telling testimony from my newspaper vendor only the other day. He hadn't come to collect his bill for over 6 months. On asking him why - he frankly admitted, the amount he receives from the company by way of commission and trade schemes ( he didn't mention "raddi") is far more than what he gets from the "grahak" (customer). So it was small change and it no longer mattered to him, if he didn't collect his bills for a few months.


Apparently the model was telecom, where company valuations are based on the number of connections. But, no one seemed to be unduly bothered about the quality of their circulation – like a friend who had joined a telecom major, that was in a tearing hurry to ramp up its number of connections soon after launch, had joked - “we have a clear ABCD classification of our customers – Ayahas, Bai-s, Chauffeurs and Drivers”. No prizes for guessing which company we are talking about here.


In all this – people seemed to totally forget, what now seems like almost a defunct concept, Readership. Initially – people fought over NRS and IRS, choosing what was advantageous for them on that round of the survey. There were front page anchor pieces and lead articles on the edit page written to praise or debunk one over the other . Once, if you recall, NRS was taken to court and its results had to be withheld for months before a settlement was reached. Finally, NRS was put to sleep last year – no one’s certain if it will be resurrected ever again - and IRS, by default, became the limited currency of the industry, which you greet with enthusiasm if the numbers look good for or you trash if they look sick.

Old timers compared ABC & Readership to “clinical (physical) examination” and “blood-test”. A Doctor needed both to tell the health of patient.

Wonder how Media Planners, Buyers and Advertisers decide between publications these days ? Is it only on intuition or gut-feel ? It can’t be simply on how much commission or discount the publication is willing to part with as some cynics would have me believe. I am sure they have developed their own metrics for it.

Perhaps, a friend from the Media Buying Agencies will enlighten us.

But, finally I am left wondering – if Media is supposed to be a “mind-product” (as Goldie defined it) – then can it be only ‘eye-balls’ that matter ? One would assume – that to stimulate the mind you have to read it too. Did I hear someone say – “Reader Connect” ?